National affairs editor of The Age

As Julia Gillard considers life after politics, prepares to move close to her mother and sister in Adelaide and sets out to write a book, she may find guidance in a study of predecessors' careers after Parliament.

Although she is a lawyer, as were several who went before her, a glance at the post-political fortunes of previous parliamentary leaders reveals no apparent need to resort to the law to secure a future.

Instead, she will find a diverse world of business ventures, academic and board appointments, lucrative speaking circuits, desirable diplomatic postings, the occasional expedition into journalism and, yes, book deals.

Former prime minister Gough Whitlam and his wife, the late Margaret, having been elevated to the status of national treasures and always lovers of the classics, spent their leisure time in later life leading travel tours to the ancient splendours of Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, South America, Russia, Italy, Germany, Indonesia and Britain.

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Amid the history of soaring luck there is also the rare disastrous mishap.

Malcolm Fraser got caught in the Lloyd's of London insurance storm of the mid-1990s, required as a ''name'' to shovel such huge amounts of money into one of the company's distressed syndicates that he had to sell the family farm at Nareen in Victoria.

Things went from bad to worse when Mr Fraser sold his bulls and one of them jumped the saleyard fence and injured a couple of buyers, resulting in a court ordering him to pay more than half a million dollars in damages.

Mr Fraser has since devoted himself to international aid efforts and remaking himself as a public conscience and thorn in the side of the Liberal Party on issues ranging from media diversity to asylum seekers.

Bob Hawke made a fortune measured in the tens of millions of dollars facilitating business deals, largely in China, and in the horseracing business. He also spent a short period as a celebrity journalist, interviewing world leaders for Channel 9. He tried his hand at writing, too, publishing The Hawke Memoirs in 1994.

Paul Keating, having made a handy sum out of a controversial piggery while prime minister, also tested himself at business in China after he got out of politics, going head to head with Mr Hawke in the late 1990s as a consultant for Colonial Insurance while Mr Hawke was representing the rival National Mutual Insurance.

Mr Keating also became international chairman of the investment bank Carnegie, Wylie and Company, now Lazard Carnegie Wylie. He didn't need to write a book - authors clamoured to write about him.

John Howard took to the international speaking circuit after he lost government and his own seat of Bennelong in 2007. He joined the Washington Speakers Bureau, earning close to a reported $1 million in his first year.

Mr Howard's autobiography, Lazarus Rising, published in 2010, is the biggest-selling book by an Australian political figure.